MSN gives peek into new engine

The beta search technology shows glitches common to any new web search engine that only get worked out over time.

Microsoft’s search engine isn’t a serious replacement for Google, Yahoo or Ask Jeeves yet.Microsoft itself describes its new search technology as “raw” and admits that for various reasons, it won’t do well on some queries. Nevertheless, it is an important start. Microsoft says it sees search as a tough technology problem to take on and solve over the next five to ten years.

“We’re humble about what needs to be done, but we’re very excited about it,” said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of MSN. “The first step is getting our own technology out there.”

SEW writes: Overall, I found the search engine is a good first effort. Clustering is desperately needed. There’s a sense that the ranking system doesn’t do quite as good of job as getting solid authority sites to the top of the list, and that it may be more susceptible to search engine optimization tricks. Much of this is relatively easy to correct, nor a surprise to see in the debut of a new service.